Kakyoung Lee "Days in New York"

This event has ended.

Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning is showcasing Days in New York, new video works by Kakyoung Lee, the twenty-ninth JCAL Workspace Artist, at its newly renovated William P. Miller Jr. Gallery. The exhibition culminates Lee’s residency at JCAL by presenting works she has created during her residency, including Days in New York, Grand Central – 0211, Jamaica Station – 1110, and Walk – 2010.

Ms. Lee enthusiastically embraces the concept that everyday is a new day and expresses through her art how the seemingly mundane and repetitive have a life force all their own. She takes us on journey that finds beauty and energy in the exploration of everyday events and occurrences. And she communicates that there are fascinating differences to be found in repeated everyday actions. Days in New York points out the critical idea that has been often ignored: Transformation completes itself through repetition, or to state the same in reverse, the act of repetition paradoxically entails the transformation of the object that is repeated. Lee’s video confirms the principle of transformative repetition that nothing repeats itself in exactly the same way.

Kakyoung Lee focuses on repetitive ordinary life that, at first, looks monotonous with no particular characteristics. Her moving images, however, deconstruct and re-construct this monotonous daily ritual in a fresh structure in which nothing is the same and all things are in continuous flux. Lee’s lines are repeated with subtle differences every moment. The outcome is that a female figure becomes a man over a period of time, or an empty space becomes gradually filled with figures that are moving from one place to another.

Taking full advantage of sophisticated editing systems such as Final Cut Pro, Lee combines hundreds of prints produced by dry-point technique to construct an animation that reflects the sequence of activities in ordinary life. This time-consuming animation also reflects the process of the artist’s art making. The artist works in her studio everyday, seemingly doing the same thing—printing the same plate—over and over again; but the outcome of these cyclical routines in her studio is a moving image that alludes to her search for her identity in the different geographic and cultural milieus through which she has passed—in the travels between her two home countries, South Korea and the United States.